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Dixie Square Mall, in the mostly-blighted "inner ring" Chicago suburb of Harvey, Illinois, opened in 1966. It suffered gradual decline, until it closed in 1978. A year later, film crews gave the mall a brief makeover and Jake and Elwood Blues drove through the place. Then, nothing. For 20-plus years, the mall sat and decayed. Renovation plans (even a planned baseball stadium for the White Sox) were popular over the years, but never panned out. In 1993, a rape and murder took place in the JC Penney's space. From space, the mall looks beat up. From the ground, it looks even worse. Human fascination with deserted space has borne a number of websites and spelunking trips (along with some excellent then-and-now comparisons), and a documentary is apparently in the works. Finally, at long last, there's renewed hope for the site. Previously seen here and here.
posted by AgentRocket at 9:55 PM PST - 21 comments

The Zucker Abrahams Zucker Comedy Glossary and Comedy Writer's Jargon (via johnaugust.com).
posted by Armitage Shanks at 9:45 PM PST - 6 comments

Wearing a shiny red hard-hat could be the latest way to gauge brain activity on the cheap, Aussie researchers report.
posted by greatgefilte at 9:39 PM PST - 5 comments

Flickr Doubles the Stakes with their new offerings for Pro users. People with existing Pro accounts will have two GB of upload capacity per month, a subscription length of double what they paid for, and two free pro accounts to gift to friends.
posted by quasistoic at 9:24 PM PST - 49 comments

Black Market Press: Back Again The Popular Tri-State Area Zine Team, Black Market Press is back again, older, wiser, and broadcasting to a much wider readership thanks to the popularity of the Blog. Social and political commentary from the pamphleteering team that brought you Media Blitz back in 1995. We encourage you to send us links, news, or hate mail.
posted by Mroz at 8:33 PM PST - 2 comments

The Mathematical Fiction Homepage is a collaborative attempt to "collect information about all significant references to mathematics in fiction." Feel free to add classic or recent works in any medium to the collection, or rate existing entries on their mathematical content and literary quality.
posted by mediareport at 7:58 PM PST - 8 comments

Will Canada's proposed 25% tax on music downloading kill legitimate music sales over the internet, or will it spur people to buy more online? via slashdot
posted by shepd at 6:28 PM PST - 18 comments

RentMySon is a subsidiary of ChildNet Services, with its corporate headquarters in San Diego, CA. In addition, we also maintain 4 regional offices across the United States.
RentMySon provides safe and trustworthy child-rental services in multiple metropolitan areas.
posted by kenko at 4:53 PM PST - 42 comments

The ultimate spoiler! Download the complete, illustrated screenplay for "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith" here for $4.99. completely legal.
posted by JPowers at 3:10 PM PST - 28 comments

Poetry by James Tate. Here are also: some thoughts by John Ashbery, an audio file of Tate reading a poem [real], an interview and finally, a dissenting view of James Tate by Dan Schneider (not the guy who was on Head of the Class). But all that is merely an excuse to link to today's most appropriate poem, James Tate's How the Pope is Chosen. Here's a brief excerpt:

After a poodle dies
all the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-Eleven.
They drink Slurpies until one of them throws up
and then he's the new Pope.
posted by Kattullus at 2:32 PM PST - 19 comments

19th century mechanical models for teaching the principles of kinematics, the geometry of motion. Includes images and descriptions, QT movies of some of the models in motion, javascript simulations, and an online library of historical mechanical and engineering texts in html and pdf, including da Vinci's Madrid Codices, and Charles Babbage on On a Method of Expressing by Signs The Action of Machinery.
posted by carter at 12:22 PM PST - 10 comments

Loose lips sink ships!!!1 (There be images, some quite big here) I suspect a lot of MeFi shares my obsession with propaganda (and propaganda-style) posters, both domestic and foreign, as well as the photoshops that the Something Awful or Fark crowds generate. CoolGov has a link today to the Office of the National National Counterintelligence Executive and their Anti-Espionage poster collection. Some are great, some are almost pure propaganda, and some show how obsessed with secrecy our government has become. That lead me to Google to look for posters on the *.gov and *.mil domains. Check out the posters for "Venemous Snakes of Afghanistan and Pakistan", or what the well dressed airmen is wearing (*note the "Essentials"), posters from the NOAA telling you that "lightning kills", the Code of Ethics for Government Officers and Employees, and this one telling GI's why smoking could kill them.
posted by rzklkng at 11:36 AM PST - 22 comments

Motion induced blindess. Be sure to check out the other really cool stuff
posted by elemenopee at 11:11 AM PST - 20 comments

Now here's an interesting story. And well worth the read. It mentions some disturbing facts - he reloads and starts shooting again - but is still sympathetic to our hero. Of course if you compare it with this... "nothing to see here folks, keep moving right along!" Oh, and is "frought" a word?
posted by milkwood at 11:02 AM PST - 25 comments

Ask and ye shall receive - Another forum in which to ask questions. It appears to operate somewhat like Ask Metafilter. I think I'll stick with AskMe, but perhaps I will try some of my questions that never really got answered over at Wondir. (via Boing Boing)
posted by caddis at 9:59 AM PST - 26 comments

Can Jewish settlers live as Palestinians? A series of essays from Bitterlemons, which regularly features Israeli and Palestinian commentary on the significant issues of the conflict, with the goal of maintaining a constructive dialogue.
posted by Ty Webb at 9:58 AM PST - 5 comments

Vanport was once Oregon's 2nd largest town. Built by shipbuilder Henry Kaiser during World War II to accommodate his workers, Vanport was the first Oregon city to house black Americans in significant numbers. (Blacks had a rough time in Oregon, even being legally prohibited to enter the state via the state constitution's exclusion law).
The city of Vanport was destroyed by a flood in 1948, displacing more than 18,000 citizens. Of these, over 25% were black. Although the city was never rebuilt, Vanport was Oregon's catalyst into racial integration and enlightenment. And dams.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 9:39 AM PST - 19 comments

Located west of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the tropical Island of Nias is renowned for its traditional buildings and archaic stone sculptures. In the 1920's, Danish doctor Agner Møller studied the local culture and language and created a unique collection of art, artefacts and photographs from Nias for the National Museum of Denmark.
posted by breezeway at 9:16 AM PST - 4 comments

More mass graves unearthed in Iraq | Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein's government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say. If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Saddam's government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of 300,000 people have been found since the U.S. invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say. In the aftermath of Saddam's fall, thousands of Iraqis overran mass-grave sites, digging for their relatives' remains with backhoes, shovels, even their bare hands. More evidence of genocide was discovered in Spring 2003, and though the numbers were disputed, the number of buried bodies discovered has continued to rise.
posted by jenleigh at 9:05 AM PST - 162 comments

Eleven years ago this month a genocide of horrific proportions nearly destroyed a country. We must never forget.
posted by ScaryShrink at 8:31 AM PST - 15 comments

Physicists working at Brookhaven National Laboratory have created what appears to be a new state of matter.
posted by dfowler at 6:50 AM PST - 28 comments

What does a nude suit, the naked cowboy and Santa Clause have in common? Remember the guy who freed (maybe killed) the fish? That's not all he's done.... Click around some and you'll see wet T-shirt contests with chicken broth, naked ice-swimming in the artic, prostitutes, the list goes on and on. I was mad about the fish, then I wasted my Sunday laughing. Wonder what his mom thinks... PS—Did I do this right?
posted by RightsaidFRED at 6:17 AM PST - 34 comments

Numbered Among the Dead The life's work of Marla Ruzicka, a 28-year-old American activist, had become door-to-door polling in Iraq to assess the number of civilian casualties of the war. She became one on Sunday, dying in a suicide bomb attack. "The Marines have nicknamed me Cluster Bomb Girl because I would hear of places where they had gone off," she said in a 2003 interview, "and I would ask them to help me clear the area."
posted by rcade at 6:03 AM PST - 55 comments

The Truro (Cape Cod) murder and DNA sweep was discussed here earlier. Well, the DNA sweep worked....Sort of.

Worthington's alleged killer was no mystery man, as the prosecutor has so often implied. Christopher McCowen was hiding in plain sight. Police interviewed him within weeks of the slaying because of his regular visits to the victim's home as a trash collector. He lived on the Cape. He had a criminal record. He had been accused repeatedly, in restraining orders on file in the local courts, of threatening other women.

Will police and prosecutors use this case as proof that general sweeps work, and in turn come to favor them over conventional investigative methods?
posted by a_day_late at 6:03 AM PST - 22 comments

Blogger Thomas Hawk gets a glimpse of Microsoft's new OS, codenamed Longhorn. Finding those files won't be a problem anymore: Longhorn is going to be fast. It will be as impressive as new operating systems always are claimed to be. Here's Paul Thurrott's review of Windows 98 (”...you must understand that this is the ultimate Windows. It's the best it's ever going to be, and yes, that's quite good”).
posted by Termite at 3:30 AM PST - 83 comments

Adobe to buy Macromedia I almost choked when I saw this press release, Adobe is going to buy out Macromedia for $3.4 billion in stock. Adobe is paying about $9 over the current share price, which means the investors will make out nicely. With the two largest design software companies becoming one, the new Adobe will be a monopoly (if it isn't already with Photoshop). I just hope they remove the ability to make really annoying Flash movies...
posted by jonknee at 1:03 AM PST - 92 comments